Many iPhone and iPad users are complaining of rapidly increasing battery drainage after updating their devices to iOS 7.1. If you’re experiencing the same issue, try out the following solutions:
- Hard reset your device by pressing the home and on/off buttons together until you see the Apple logo.
- (For iPad users); some users report that iOS 7.1 upgrade resets the Lock/Unlock switch to OFF. Go to Settings > General and turn Lock/Unlock on.
- See this article, and adjust your settings and turn off what you are not using such as:
- Turn off Location Services (Settings > Privacy)
- Disable Push Notifications (Settings > Notification Center). You may choose the apps you want to turn off, then set Change Alert Style to None, turn Badge App Icon off, turn Sounds off.
- Turn off Background app and content refresh (Settings > General > Background App Refresh)
- Turn off Automatic updates (Settings > iTunes and Apple Store)
- Turn off Spotlight Search (Settings > General > Spotlight Search)
- Turn off parallax. Simple tap Settings > General > Accessibility and set Reduce Motion to on.
- Turn off AirDrop/Bluetooth if you’re not using (Control Center).
- Turn off auto-brightness (Settings > Wallpapers & Brightness)
- Turn off Siri’s “Raise to Speak” (Settings > General > Siri > Raise to Speak)
- Turn off Fetch New Data (Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars). Adjust Push and Fetch settings, to extend your battery life, we suggest this setting: Push is turned off and Fetch set to Manually.
Perform a clean iOS install through iTunes (last resort), If the solutions above do not work to solve your problem. Here is how:
- Make sure that your computer has the latex versions of iTunes installed. You may download here. You can easily check, if you have the latest version of iTunes.:
- Windows: Choose Help > Check for Updates.
- Mac: Choose iTunes > Check for Updates.
- You need to disable Activation Lock. Simply Go to Settings > iCloud and turn off Find My iPhone
- Using iTunes, back up device. Now you are ready to restore:
- Connect your iPhone or iPad to your computer using your USB cable.
- In iTunes, click the Restore button. This will restore your device to factory settings and delete everything.
- Your iPhone/iPad will restart, after it is restored to factory settings,, and you’ll see the “Slide to set up” screen. Now set up your device as new using the set up assistant.
Check now if your battery problem still exists. Use your device extensively to make sure. If you think this restore fixed your problem, now you may set up your device using your backup. Here is how:
- Connect your iPhone/iPad device to your computer.
- in iTunes, click File > Devices > Restore from Back up.
Related: Backups: iTunes vs iCloud, How to choose?